The Peñasco Theatre Collective

About The Peñasco Theatre Collective

The Peñasco Theatre Collective is dedicated to fostering community building, collective empowerment and social transformation through the arts

On Highway 75, nestled beneath billowing clouds and a stark blue sky, is the area’s only solar powered hand-built adobe theatre. Built in 1940 by Amado Roybal, the Peñasco Theatre stands as a testament to the resiliency of a community gathering place, and the importance of keeping performance traditions alive. The edifice radiates with 75 years of collective expression. You can almost hear the laughter, the shuffle of dancing feet to Northern New Mexican melodies, the melodramas of Mexican Cinema, and the multitude of voices sharing centuries old ways of knowing echoing off the walls.

The Peñasco Theatre Collective (PTC), a group of performers and visual artists continue the tradition of utilizing arts and culture to bring people together in a mutually respectful culturally diverse environment.

From ongoing youth performance afterschool classes based in circus arts to a self-directed artist-in-residency, the theatre offers a wide array of creative experiences for the artistically adventurous.

For the past 16 years artists and performers working through the Peñasco Theatre have dedicated their time, creative energies and unique visions to community building, collective empowerment and social transformation through the arts.

The Peñasco Theatre Collective is committed to lateralized, non-hierarchical leadership centering Xicanx, Indigenous, and queer people of color. We are committed to creating alternative systems of organizing and ways that actively fight against the capitalist white supremacist system that is at war with the planet and the people attempting to thrive in harmony with it. We strive to be a true collective that supports and sustains the artists/activists that are part of it, and to be a resource and a refuge for the broader community.